Today’s Dave Sez entry is brought to you by the number 10.  Ten.  The percentage of the reduction in the number of plays and points in college football this year.
That’s one of many interesting numbers you’ll find when you click here and read this excellent post over at StateFans Nation.  Be sure to click on the various links in their article – they’ll take you to several other posts and sites containing interesting college football stats.  One site in particular that I’d never seen is this beauty – cfbstats.com. Go check that bad boy out and get back to me in an hour or so when you’ve had your fill.
OK, now that you’re back, we can get back to our number of the day – ten. I waited a while to pass judgment on the new college timing rules, specifically the one that stipulates that the clock will start as soon as the ball is set after changes of possession. Many astute folks ripped this rule as soon as they learned of it, but I’m not that clever. I didn’t really get it until I saw it in action. Even then, I decided that I’d wait a few weeks to see what I think. Well, now I know for sure – it sucks. As the numbers linked to above show, the new rule that was supposed to speed games up basically chopped 10% off of the true length of games – not the actual time between the beginning and end of the game (by all reports, that number hasn’t really changed much), but the total number of plays in a game. Not only that, but some of the plays we do get, the ones that should be the most exciting, are botched because teams don’t have time to get set and run a proper play late in a close game.
What’s most obnoxious about this to me is the ridiculous claim that this is being done to help fans, yet they made no effort whatsoever to trim time during halftime, the quarter breaks or during the 483 TV timeouts we have to sit through. God forbid we only watch 40 Geico commercials instead of 47 during a typical game. So instead, we get less football and a higher commercial-to-football ratio. Thanks, NCAA. Good work as always.